It's very sad to see my old newspaper in London, The Daily Telegraph, running this headline with no irony whatsoever.Global Temps continued their plunge last month. Temperatures are down .74°F since Al Gore released his "Inconvenient Truth."
Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter has awarded some of the state's first stimulus money to his former employer in a no-bid contract.Oh, by the way... The article didn't mention this but Governor Ritter is a democrat.
Ritter hired his former law firm, the Washington-based Hogan & Hartson, in a no-bid contract to review stimulus spending, The Denver Post reported Friday. It said the firm was paid $40,000 in stimulus money through June.
Aides to the governor insisted the contract was properly awarded. The state attorney general's office deemed the contract necessary to allow the state to have speedy legal advice about stimulus money. The contract is too small to require competitive bidding.
Ritter worked for the Denver office of Hogan & Hartson in 2005, leaving the following year when he ran for governor. The law firm has about 1,300 lawyers across the country and specializes in public finance, real estate, white-collar litigation and environmental and governmental regulation.
Former Vice President Al Gore declared that the Congressional climate bill will help bring about “global governance.”If we're going to have a global government-- Please don't put this fearmongering doofus in charge.
“I bring you good news from the U.S., “Gore said on July 7, 2009 in Oxford at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment, sponsored by UK Times.
“Just two weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey climate bill,” Gore said, noting it was “very much a step in the right direction.” President Obama has pushed for the passage of the bill in the Senate and attended a G8 summit this week where he agreed to attempt to keep the Earth's temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees C.
Gore touted the Congressional climate bill, claiming it “will dramatically increase the prospects for success” in combating what he sees as the “crisis” of man-made global warming.
“But it is the awareness itself that will drive the change and one of the ways it will drive the change is through global governance and global agreements.” (Editor's Note: Gore makes the “global governance” comment at the 1 min. 10 sec. mark in this UK Times video.)
Gore's call for “global governance” echoes former French President Jacques Chirac's call in 2000.
It's the morning after Independence Day, and Eric Holder Jr. is feeling the weight of history. The night before, he'd stood on the roof of the White House alongside the president of the United States, leaning over a railing to watch fireworks burst over the Mall, the monuments to Lincoln and Washington aglow at either end. "I was so struck by the fact that for the first time in history an African-American was presiding over this celebration of what our nation is all about," he says. Now, sitting at his kitchen table in jeans and a gray polo shirt, as his 11-year-old son, Buddy, dashes in and out of the room, Holder is reflecting on his own role. He doesn't dwell on the fact that he's the country's first black attorney general. He is focused instead on the tension that the best of his predecessors have confronted: how does one faithfully serve both the law and the president?Three top Al-Qaeda terrorists were waterboarded during the Bush year.
Alone among cabinet officers, attorneys general are partisan appointees expected to rise above partisanship. All struggle to find a happy medium between loyalty and independence. Few succeed. At one extreme looms Alberto Gonzales, who allowed the Justice Department to be run like Tammany Hall...
Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter.
"Had [President Bush's Warrantless Surveillance Program" been in place before the [9/11] attacks, hijackers Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi almost certainly would have been identified and located."Hat Tip Larwyn
I have just emailed Channels 2, 4 and 5 to complain that there was not any news coverage about the St. Louis "Show Us the Bill- Hands Off Our Healthcare" Rally held in Clayton today. Everyone should do thisGood idea. Here are the websites:
Bush's plan passed in April 2003 while Obama's passed in February 2009. I chose the S&P 500 Index starting point one month prior to passage because the market typically discounts the information beforehand as the bills work their way through Congress. I chose 6 months-post passage as the ending point because that's all the data we have for Obama's plan so far.The difference, of course, is that George Bush gave people back their hard-earned money.
Bush: From March 2003 to October 2003, the S&P 500 went from 835 to 1034 or 23.8%.
Obama: From January 2009 through July 2009, the S&P went from 932 to 879 or -5.2%.
By way of comparison, I also reviewed the market returns a full year prior to these time periods and the results show a very similar situation.
The S&P 500 return under Bush 1-year prior was -26.2%, hurt by the internet bubble collapse, 9/11 and corporate scandals. Trillions of dollars in lost wealth.
When times are tough, one thing that tends to raise the spirits is knowing that somebody else has it worse. And as wretched as the U.S. economy seems, it's not as bad as in other regions.Funny... When the US economic output under George W. Bush was leading the industrialized world the media wouldn't publish global comparisons?
The International Monetary Fund's latest tally of world economic conditions forecasts a 2.6 decline in U.S. economic output for all of 2009, and anemic growth of 0.8 percent in 2010. That's more optimistic than the IMF's prediction from three months ago, but those are still lousy numbers. A weak economy throughout 2010 would mean a bleak employment picture, an agonizingly slow housing recovery, and another year or two likely to feel like a recession, whether it's technically labeled that or not.
President Obama on Saturday defended his $787 billion economic stimulus package as having ended an economic free fall after a week of criticism from both ends of the political spectrum.It's hard to figure out where he's getting his information.
Obama used his weekly address to the nation Saturday to say the stimulus in a little more than 100 days had worked as intended, and that without it there would have been tens of thousands of additional layoffs.
He added that the stimulus was not designed to work in four months but over two years, and seemed to ask those listening or viewing the address for patience.
“Crucially, this is a plan that will also accelerate greatly throughout the summer and the fall,” said Obama, who added his administration always knew it would take some time for money to get out the door.
According to recovery.gov, the government web site tracking the stimulus, only $523 million of the $20 billion allocated to the Department of Transportation has been spent so far.
Supporters of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor are quietly targeting the Connecticut firefighter who's at the center of Sotomayor's most controversial ruling.Previously:
On the eve of Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearing, her advocates have been urging journalists to scrutinize what one called the "troubled and litigious work history" of firefighter Frank Ricci.
This is opposition research: a constant shadow on Capitol Hill.
"The whole business of getting Supreme Court nominees through the process has become bloodsport," said Gary Rose, a government and politics professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn.
On Friday, citing in an e-mail "Frank Ricci's troubled and litigious work history," the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way drew reporters' attention to Ricci's past. Other advocates for Sotomayor have discreetly urged journalists to pursue similar story lines.
Two detained Christian women are "in danger of being forgotten" amid concerns they may face execution, Iranian Christians said Tuesday, July 7.
Marzieh Amirizadeh, 30, and Maryam Rustampoor, 27, have been held for over four months in Tehran's notorious Evin prison apparently for converting to Christianity from Islam.
Iranian Christians and rights investigators said the two young women, who were arrested March 5, suffered sleep deprivation as part of police interrogations and were held in solitary confinement for three weeks in May and early June.
Later, they were put together in one small cell for about two weeks before being moved to a larger area to make place for other inmates, including many protesters who were detained following last month's disputed presidential elections, said Christians with close knowledge about the situation.
About 600 women were reportedly brought to Evin prison during the protests.
There was still no clarity regarding the case of the two Christian women, Tuesday, July 7, with one judge reportedly telling them they were both to be executed as ‘apostates’. "Maryam and Marzieh have responded with courage, however, telling the judge to 'expedite his sentence'," said Pray for Iran, an Internet initiative of Iranian churches.
According to results of a Gallup poll published here Thursday, 41 percent of Hondurans think the ouster was justified, with 28 opposed to it.Reuters also reported these same numbers.
The de facto regime headed by Roberto Micheletti cited such support as he began talks Thursday in Costa Rica with that country's president, Oscar Arias, who has agreed to mediate.
A new CID-Gallup poll indicated that Hondurans were split on the coup, with a slight majority appearing to oppose it.So what did the poll really say?
Forty-six percent said they disagreed with Zelaya's ouster and 41 percent said they approved of it, according to the face-to-face survey of 1,204 Hondurans in the days following the ouster. Another 13 percent declined to answer.
They were about evenly divided on Zelaya himself, with 31 percent saying they had a positive image of him and 32 percent negative.
The survey reveals that the majority of those questioned believed that the actions the government took with respect to Zelaya justified his removal from office as the President of the Republic.It looks like the AP was not correct in their article. In fact the exact opposite is true.
41 percent believed that it was justified, 28 percent think not, while 31 percent do not know.
47 percent of respondents saw the actions by Zelaya as a means to stay in power, while 36 percent believed it was his desire to introduce constitutional changes.
The CID-Gallup poll revealed that 63 percent of respondents did not agree to support a query for the installation of a National Constituent Assembly (Zelaya's idea), 22 per cent said it was, while 15 percent did not know.
MSNBC’s David Shuster and Tamron Hall labeled the circulation of a photo of President Obama...a “right wing smear,” and singled out Fox News and Drudge as culprits. They brought on a Media Matters spokesman, who accused these sites of being motivated by a “racist stereotype of an oversexed black man being a predator.” They let this accusation go unanswered (audio clip from the promos and the segment available here).
Shuster and Hall promoted the segment on the Obama picture from the start of the 4 pm Eastern hour of MSNBC’s live coverage. A graphic on-screen at the top of the hour pondered, “Right Wing Smear?,” as Shuster read the first teaser: “Plus, smearing President Obama- some on the Right went crazy over this photo they claimed shows President Obama with a wandering eye. But check the tape- the actual video shows a far different story- why the Right was so wrong with this one.”
** Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or notThere's more. This is another Zombie Time classic.
** The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation's drinking water or in food
** Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise
** People who "contribute to social deterioration" (i.e. undesirables) "can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility
President Barack Obama promised Pope Benedict on Friday that he would do everything possible to reduce the number of abortions in the United States, the Vatican said.Unreal.
Dressed in red and black and carrying images of the Che Guevara or of Hugo Chavez, the protesters shouted their support for Zelaya's return to the power.Only 28% of Hondurans opposed Zelaya's ouster.
In the march there were unionists, magisteriales leaders and popular leaders.
The protesters shutdown the highway and caused severe congestion. They interrupted traffic for several hours.
